Overview

It is a dark and snowy night when the Magic Tree House whisks Jack and Annie back to colonial times. General George Washington is about to lead his army in a sneak attack against their enemy. But now the terrible weather is making the great general question his plans. Can Jack and Annie keep history on track? The fate of the country rests in their hands!

Using their magic tree house, Jack and Annie travel back to the time of the American Revolution and help General ...

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This Book

Overview

It is a dark and snowy night when the Magic Tree House whisks Jack and Annie back to colonial times. General George Washington is about to lead his army in a sneak attack against their enemy. But now the terrible weather is making the great general question his plans. Can Jack and Annie keep history on track? The fate of the country rests in their hands!

Using their magic tree house, Jack and Annie travel back to the time of the American Revolution and help General George Washington during his famous crossing of the Delaware River.

MARY POPE OSBORNE is the author of the New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series. She and her husband, writer Will Osborne (author of Magic Tree House: The Musical), live in northwestern Connecticut with their three dogs. Ms. Osborne is also the coauthor of the companion Magic Tree House Fact Trackers series with Will, and with her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce.

SAL MURDOCCA has illustrated more than 200 children's trade and text books. He is also a librettist for children's opera, a video artist, an avid runner, hiker, and bicyclist, and a teacher of children's illustration at the Parsons School of Design. Sal lives and works in New York with his wife, Nancy.

Biography

Ever since 1992, Mary Pope Osborne has been thrilling kids everywhere with her delightfully exciting Magic Tree House series. The globetrotting escapades of time travelers Jack and Annie are brimming with adventure and magic (not to mention some subtly placed lessons on history and geography). With a life like Osborne's, it's only natural that she would be capable of bringing such wondrous stories to life.

Osborne was brought up in a military family, and her parents' work led to a lifestyle marked by constant change. "By the time I was 15," she says on randomhouse.com, "I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina." While many kids would probably feel disoriented by such constant change, Osborne wouldn't have had it any other way. "Moving was never traumatic for me, but staying in one place was. When my dad finally retired to a small town in North Carolina, I nearly went crazy with boredom. I craved the adventure and changing scenery of our military life."

And adventure is exactly what Osborne got! After college, she embarked on a series of daring treks across the globe that would surely give Jack and Annie a run for their money. "For a while I camped in a cave on the island of Crete," she said. "Then I joined up with a small band of European young people heading to 'The East.' We traveled through 11 Asian countries and nearly lost our lives, first in an earthquake in northern Afghanistan and then in a riot in Kabul."

Following an illness she contracted in Katmandu, Osborne returned home to the U.S. trying her hand at a vast variety of jobs: window dresser, medical assistant, Russian travel consultant, waitress, bartender, and an assistant editor at a children's magazine. Although Osborne had unconsciously moved closer toward her ultimate career, she says that her first attempts at writing seemed to come without warning. "One day, out of the blue, I began writing a story about an 11-year-old girl in the South," she recalls. "The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the story were similar to happenings in my childhood...it became a young adult novel called Run, Run Fast as You Can. Finally, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up."

She sure did! Since then, Osborne has penned a slew of stories, including picture books, chapter books, middle-grade biographies, and young adult novels; but she is indisputably best known for her wonderful Magic Tree House books, a happy hodge-podge of history and mystery with a time travel theme kids find irresistible. No doubt inspired by Osborne's own highly adventurous life, these exiting expeditions have attracted droves of children and pleased educators by combining compulsively readable storytelling with useful facts about geography and history.

As was written of the series in Children's Literature, "Mary Pope Osborne provides nicely paced excitement for young readers, and there's just enough information mixed in so that children will take away some historical fact along with a sense of accomplishment at having completed a chapter book." As much as Osborne has certainly pleased her readers (not to mention their parents and teachers), perhaps no one is quite as pleased as she. "I'm one of those very lucky people who absolutely loves what they do for a living," she explained. "There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children's book author."

Good To Know

A few fascinating outtakes from our interview with Osborne:

"One of the most defining experiences of my life was traveling overland in an old van through the Middle East and Asia in the early 1970's. One day, when a small group of us were camped in a remote part of northern Afghanistan, we saw a woman riding horseback over the sloping plain. Her long brown hair floated on the wind and she wore a bright gypsy-style dress. When she got closer, I realized she was one of my roommates from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill! Though I didn't even know she'd left the U.S.and she didn't know I was in Afghanistan, we weren't that surprised to come upon each other. That says a lot about the times we were living in then."

"After 26 years of living in New York City, my husband Will and I now spend most of our time in Northwestern Connecticut, living in a house that overlooks a lake. We kayak and hike with our two Norfolk terriers, Joey and Mr. Bezo. Will's learning Italian, and I've been working with a tutor for two years trying to understand Dante's Divine Comedy. One of my biggest hobbies is reading philosophy and theology. We spend lots of time, of course, on our work. After writing three shows for the Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina, Will's writing a musical based on the Magic Tree House series. I'm writing book # 38 in the series. I also spend a lot of time with my sister Natalie Pope Boyce who works on the Magic Tree House Research Guides. Natalie and our nephews and some of our best friends live nearby in the Berkshires Hills of Massachusetts, so we're up there a lot, too. My only complaint is there is not enough time to do all I want to do. For instance, I'd love to take drawing classes and I'd love to paint the lake we're living on. And I'd love to bird watch and become a better cook and learn about classical music. Maybe sometime in the future...."

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Ninjatasterific

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Anonymous

Posted November 20, 2000

Revolutionary War on Wednesday (Magic Tree House Series #22)

In the latest adventure Jack and Annie find something to (oops can't say) to help Morgan save Camelot. Along the way they meet General George Washington before the Christmas surprise attack. This story is a great book and has lots of interesting facts about the Revolutionary War. If we could add more stars, this book would get 10!!

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted October 29, 2012

Classic.

Classic childrens book, I always loved this series. Little old for it now, but I reccomend it for any elementary schooler.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted January 7, 2012

Rave review from my grand daughter!!

My 7 year old grand daughter is enchanted with this series. She wants all the books! Not an ebook,either ---- a REAL paper and ink book!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted January 27, 2013

Wow

Ok annoymas i thought you were you were like 10 or 11 i didnt know you had kids so ya ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.m.mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm oh ya and i am nine please write back if you get this becuasr it doesnt show it on mine thanks

Charlotte

1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted March 21, 2015

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Anonymous

Posted March 1, 2015

Cool

It's awesome. I really like it

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Anonymous

Posted January 21, 2015

Revilotion

Love it

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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DarcyLizzy

Posted November 17, 2014

Great way to introduce the Revolutionary War and history of it t

Great way to introduce the Revolutionary War and history of it to kids! My sister had zero interest in history and we've been using the tree house books to get her some introductory feeling for different historical topics. She loves the magic tree house books and has learned a great deal from them. She is way more willing to study history now because she feels she can relate something to it that she is familiar with. So thank you to the author for creating these books. They've helped alot of kids who otherwise would be tuned out at school!

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Anonymous

Posted May 21, 2014

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 7, 2014

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0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted March 31, 2014

Click here if you want to be awesome

You are secertly geting robed

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted February 1, 2014

Y

Poeple say you like this book on 5 stars how your raiting.maybe it will give the auther an award.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted March 25, 2013

Magic tree house

I hope you read this book it is great

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted November 13, 2012

Magic Tree House book

The free sample shouldn't be paragraphs about what teachers and student's opinions. It should be about the little scraps of details in the book and you should pursuae the free samples for the kids to want to buy the real book. Try making it spicy, and beef-it-up!

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted May 1, 2012

Hi

I have not read it but am loking forward too it

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 24, 2012

Goof book

I wish I had such a good emagenaition

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Anonymous

Posted February 26, 2012

REALLY!?

Im sorry to say but I wanted to read the samply to see if I wanted it but it was only the part of kids saying why they liked it and I got NO book reading out of it.

0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted January 15, 2012

Love it

Baddy

0 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonimo

Posted March 4, 2010

This is a review written by M.X....my 9 year old Granddaughter

Revolutionary War on Wednesday is about two kids who go into a magic tree house and go back to the 1700's. They observe the Revolutionary War for a friend in the Midieval Times named Morgan LaFey, King Arthur's sister. The book was written by Mary Pope Osborne who writes the Magic Tree House Series. I like the book because it has facts from the Revolutionary War that some people didn't even know! I also like it because it has trust in the story. Jack and Anie trusted each other to get something for Morgan in the 1700's. The book also has a syaing that George Washington said himself. I think that anyone can and should read this stupendus book and series.

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